I tend to bounce around from distro to distro, checking out what is new in each one. Which one is the fastest for the machine I am using. What features do I like and dislike. I am often undecisive. But a question always remains in my searches. What would be the smarter choice in choosing? A distro that is created and backed by a corperation or one created and backed by a community? Which one will still be standing in the future? So far the ones I have tried in both categories are solid distros, each with its own learning curve. So, what do you think oh community of linux users, is it even worth me considering or worrying about?

Matt4179 wrote: But a question always remains in my searches. What would be the smarter choice in choosing? A distro that is created and backed by a corperation or one created and backed by a community? Which one will still be standing in the future? So far the ones I have tried in both categories are solid distros, each with its own learning curve. So, what do you think oh community of linux users, is it even worth me considering or worrying about?

Matt4179

I consider that the WM or Desktop environment more important to consider than back-end who supports. Forum Life is a pretty good indicator of flourishing or shriveling of the vine towards the future. For me really comes down to what the Desktop environment requirements are for me. I don't want to learn linux beyond what is needed to maintain a stable and fast environment. Tho love tweaking this and modify for aesthetics. It is always more about getting it tuned up for actual producing results and works. Not tinkering and learning the OS as others do.

Unfortunately I accept Ubuntu's back-end support through repositories & forum support tho disagree with Shuttleworth's vision and direction. Have settled on KDE and also not finding their forums very friendly or much in the social regards in forums.

Personally I do not project beyond next 3-5 years kind of thing. As worrying about what's beyond that is a waste of my energies and a tendency to fog my decision making on what might be. If It can fulfill my needs for the next 2-3 years then happy to pull the trigger and get on with getting work done. Instead of wasting time analyzing and generating doubt and the inevitable gnashing of teeth .

And found the Mint Family a great balance of Developers that listen to their user base. Producing outstanding Distro's and a friendly helpful community. That's good enough for me. .

Well, that is a bit of a loaded question. It seems you feel that a community run distributions somehow warrants concern for their future, or you feel the opposite and question whether you should have concern for commercial distributions' future? Neither I'd say. Debian is one of the oldest community run distributions, and has over a thousand active volunteer developers. It's not going anywhere but forward, and the Linux Mint Debian Edition is based on it. Ubuntu, as a commercial distribution (Canonical is intending to make a profit), has grown to just over five hundred paid developers is continuing to make inroads into having Ubuntu preloaded on hardware. Despite how some people seem to enjoy criticizing Ubuntu, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere but forward either, and the Linux Mint Main Edition is based on it.

There are plenty of other examples of community and commercial distributions that have a long track record and for which I wouldn't be much concerned about their future (Red Hat, Fedora, Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, etc.). The GNU/Linux Distribution Timeline can be fun to have a look at, to trace the history: http://futurist.se/gldt/.

But I agree with Orbmiser, the desktop environment and other applications are what you actually use from day to day. If you are using KDE for example, you can also hop on over to a BSD should Linux go away completely. Finding a distribution with a community that you feel at home in is I think most relevant. Nobody can say what will happen with a distribution in 3-5 years, so focus on the "now" and use something that you feel at home with and helps you today